


Oak wood and vanilla

by Dienda



Category: True Detective
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Smoking, the good years
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-27
Updated: 2015-06-27
Packaged: 2018-04-06 09:17:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 874
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4216095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dienda/pseuds/Dienda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s a knock on the side door and Rust doesn’t bother putting his pants or his shoes back on before opening; after two years, he’d recognize that knock from beyond the fucking grave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Oak wood and vanilla

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hartcohle (karategirl448)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=hartcohle+%28karategirl448%29).



There’s a knock on the side door and Rust doesn’t bother putting his pants or his shoes back on before opening; after two years, he’d recognize that knock from beyond the fucking grave.

“Hey.” Marty’s in jeans and button-up. There’s a brown paper bag in his left hand.

“What are you doin’ here?” Rust asks, even though it’s pretty clear and not exactly unexpected. After the whole mess with the stenographer back in ’95 Marty’s stopped carousing with his buddies the same way he stopped chasing pussy; he even gave up drinking for a few months but Rust never though that would last long. Now every time Marty feels the old itch of having a night out he picks up a six pack and occupies Rust’s main room without so much as calling ahead.

“I’m checking on my asshole partner.”

Rust doesn’t move an inch. “I saw you two hours ago, Marty. Don’t you have family shit to do?”

“Maggie took the girls shopping, won’t be back in a while.”

“What’s in the bag?” he asks, narrowing his eyes.

“What do you think?” Marty answers as he pushes past him into the house.

He’s already unfolding the other lawn chair by the time Rust closes the door. A small bottle of Jameson emerges from the bag.

“So,” Marty starts, pulling something else from the bag. “Jones at the front desk just had a baby and gave me this.” He holds up a glass tube with a cigar inside. It's sorta slim, not one of those thick, enormous sticks rich assholes smoke in movies and cartoons.

Rust snorts, sagging onto the other chair. “You came here to smoke a Piggly Wiggly cigar? Shit.”

The other man scowls at him. “This ain’t from the Piggly Wiggly, asshole. Chuck said he got it from a guy who smuggles ‘em from Mexico.”

Rust opens the bottle and takes a swig. “That right?”

“dee ahmow” Marty says squinting at the thin paper band around the cigar. “I love you, right?”

“I don’t know, Marty. Do you?” Rust lets his lips curl into a grin.

“Fuck you, smartass. I meant that’s what it means.” Marty takes the cigar out of the tube and hands it to Rust. There’s the silhouette of a bull and a matador right under the name.

“Te amo,” Rust lets the ‘t’ explode soft on his tongue and cuts the vowels into neat, short sounds. “Well, looks like Jones was right.” He brings the tip to his nose, breathes in the sweet, smoky scent of the rolled tobacco.

“Well, I ain’t gonna smoke the whole thing alone. I tried that once when I was a kid and it didn’t end well.” Rust makes to give it back to Marty but his partner shakes his head, grabs the bottle instead. “You light it, you’re the fucking expert, I don’t wanna do it wrong and have the thing burn crooked or some shit.”

Rust takes his knife and cuts a small hole into the cap, and fishes his lighter from his back pocket. Sure enough, the thick cloud of smoke that starts filling the room doesn’t have the pungent stench of cheap tobacco; it smells like oak wood with something almost syrupy clinging to the tail of each wisp of smoke.

“This ain’t half bad,” Marty declares after his first drag. “After graduation I thought I’d smoke a cigar to, y’know, celebrate with something highfalutin.” He snorts. “Threw up all over my shoes. Couldn’t get out of bed for a whole day, worse headache I’ve ever had. You ever smoked one?”

“Not really,” Rust murmurs. “Back―back _then,_ I met a cartel guy in Sinaloa who only ever smoked this brand, even over real Cuban cigars.”

Even now, he can almost feel on his skin the peach-toned heat of the Mazatlán shoreline, the salt clinging to his veins and to his lips. If he closed his eyes he knows he’d see the sunset bleeding over the shifting waves. It was about three weeks before everything went to shit at Port Houston but that was good trip. As good as it could ever get with Crash.

“Are they really like that?” Marty asks. “Those guys? With the white linen suits, the golden chains, beauty queen on their arm, tattoos on the goddamned neck.”

Rust hums. “Only the big wigs, the rest of them look like every other mook on the planet, they all have the same empty eyes.”

They keep passing the bottle and the cigar back and forth, without exchanging another word. Their conversations are still a bit of a hit and miss sometimes, but they’ve perfected their silence, tamed it into something that finally fits.

“Here,” Rust hand the stub to Marty for the last drag and downs the rest of the Jameson. As the smoke clears he finally pinpoints the sweet thread as the yellow-black taste of vanilla. He likes the thought of the smell lingering on the walls, clinging to Marty’s hair and clothes as he drives back home.

Marty groans and sags on the chair. “Goddamn.”

“You gonna puke?”

“Nah, I feel like I could melt into the fucking floor.”

“Mmh, so takeout?” Rust doesn’t wait for an answer before reaching for the phone.

 

**Author's Note:**

> [Te Amo](http://www.teamo-cigars.com/) is a totally real brand of fine cigars. I couldn't have made that up.


End file.
